Like thousands of other talented footballers, Jacob Bedeau was released into the footballing wilderness at the age of 16 after temporarily seeing his dreams shattered by Leyton Orient.

But fast-forward six months and Aston Villa had beaten off competition from Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool to land the defender, who was watched by 27 scouts during one of his final outings for Bury.

The League One Shakers acted as the perfect stepping stone for Bedeau. In fact, such is Bedeau’s talent, Bury youth team coach Ryan Kidd told him that he wouldn’t complete his scholarship at Gigg Lane immediately after he’d signed on the dotted line.

“When we signed him, we said to him: ‘We reckon we’ll sell you within 12 months’ and he sort of laughed but he went in six,” Kidd joked.

“We were lucky to get him, I’m delighted to have worked with him and I really think he’s got a massive future in the game.”

After Leyton Orient, whom he supports, had dumped him on the football scrapheap, Bedeau was handed a trial with Bury after being put forward to Kidd by his agent.

Bedeau shone during his trial match, prompting the youth team supremo to offer him a contract.

Kidd said: “We have an agent, who was representing Jacob at the time, who had done a little bit of business with us up at Bury.

“We had just sold a lad about six months earlier to Everton, a left-sided central defender, and he’d watched his development, knew how we like to play out from the back and he said: ‘I’ve got another one just like Matty Foulds’.”

Like most clubs below the Championship, Bury rely on their youth team to prop up first team numbers when a crisis sets in.

And when Bury were struggling with injuries, Bedeau was given the first team call. He featured in a few squads under manager David Flitcroft before he was sacked, leaving Chris Brass and Kidd to take temporary charge.

Still injury-stricken, Brass and Kidd placed their trust in the fresh-faced Bedeau, who combined his football career with A-Level studies during his six months living in digs in Manchester.

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Coming into a Bury team that had been struggling was the ultimate baptism of fire, made no easier by the opposition he was tasked with playing against.

Five of Bedeau’s seven matches for the Shakers came against current top-six teams.

“The manager lost his job and I went up to the first team and it coincided with a number of injuries and we thought, well, let’s put this kid in and see if he can handle it.

“At 16, to be playing League One football was a massive ask but he had been training really well.

“He took to it like a duck to water. He was fantastic, really good, outstanding at times. It was funny to see because there were League One managers trying to put big centre-forwards on him but he was clever.”

Bedeau, now 17, wasn’t the only sought after youngster on Bury’s books during the January transfer window. George Miller, Scott Burgess and Bedeau’s best friend in football, Callum Styles, are all still attracting interest from some of English football’s most illustrious names.

And like any career decision, Bedeau’s move to Villa wasn’t taken lightly.